Safety rules require that before maintenance work on medium voltage (MV) and high voltage (HV) equipment is carried out, the status of the equipment has to be checked. Medium voltage MV generally includes a voltage range of about 3 kV to about 50 kV, and high voltage HV generally includes a voltage range of about 50 kV to about 400 kV and higher. The equipment has to be de-energized and/or disconnected and then grounded. In order to avoid critical situations during grounding, the status of a contact pin of an electrical breaker has to be visually checked before the grounding connection is made. This is referred to as “visible disconnect”. Known separable connectors in MV grids sometimes have to be pulled under load to perform the visible disconnect. This is a cumbersome operation, since a cable pulled from the connector must be handled with sticks to provide the required safety distance to life parts. Commonly, the cable has to be pulled forwardly out of a cable duct in order to position the cable at a prepared safe place. The general trend of using larger cable cross-sections renders handling the cable and the connector even more difficult.
The prior art includes easier methods of disconnecting a cable, such as to integrate a removable link such as a contact pin within the connector, the operator simply pulling this removable link with a suitable stick. An example of such an electrical connector assembly is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,865,559 A. Such known separable MV connectors, however, are covered with an opaque electrically conductive outer screen for technical and safety reasons. Consequently, a visual check of the status of the removable link is not possible. U.S. Pat. No. 8,388,381 B2 discloses an electrical connector assembly having a visible open port provided in a connector body, wherein at least a portion of the insulative material inside the connector body is visible through the visible open port. Providing such an opening within the outer shield, however, has the problem that the electrically conductive layer is interrupted and that safety requirements regarding touch safety can no longer be met.